Continuing on our multi-year long voyage of adventure and discovery, we find ourselves deep in the first season of The Next Generation. We're getting to the end of season 1, thankfully... probably another week though, alas.
Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it.
Home Soil - TNG 8.5/10
The first 8 minutes are people doing technobabble awkwardly and grumpily and it's very boring and uninteresting and then people start screaming and that makes it a little better. Data dodges lasers which is sick but then people get angry that he breaks a laser that was trying to kill him. Come on y'all.
They find a speck that they think could be life, but it's inorganic, no carbon. And they're like "THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE" as if the Horta aren't canonically a part of the federation and fucking rad. How DARE you ignore the Horta, by favorite rug covered in meatballs >:( Also we had a fucking Crystalline Entity earlier this season y'all
Troi: "I can't really make heads of tails of this woman. Maybe you can!" Riker: "Seduce her, gotcha"
If literally anyone other than Frakes was playing Riker I would not like him.
Anyways the episode in general is really quite good. The idea isn't super original but I like how they handle the "oh god we didn't know it was life" and the life declaring war on humans. Also the line "SEND US HOME TO WET SAND" is a good line.
Coming of Age - TNG 7/10
Oh BOY! Another asshole Admiral episode! AND a Wesley episode! Okay first let's complain about the Admiral shit
An asshole Admiral shows up, explains nothing, says something is wrong with the ship, and makes his goon go around and watch everyone. Gives me big Customer Service vibes, with some corporate shitbag who doesn't know you or your job showing up and watching your every move, judging you for each time you don't remind someone of the extended warranty and hoping you can be fired. And if you ask any questions or get snippy they abuse their power to fire you anyway.
Like yes. He's supposed to be a shitbag. We're supposed to hate him. And we do! But it doesn't make it pleasant to watch!! At all! :D
The second part of this episode is Wesley. Which again, I think people shit on Wesley too much but I'm still not a big fan of his writing. It's also not pleasant to watch! Though I do REALLY like him and Worf's conversation about fear. Worf is VERY underutilized this season. Let my boy be Klingon. Let him DO THINGS. I'm glad they're doing it.
Also like, I'm glad more recently they've made the Acadamy less of a "This is for GENIUSES" thing cause it makes me uncomfy here. Some of the parts of it are nice though, like the angy guy who bumped into them, it's cute. Also, Benzites are so cool. Good alien design. Also there's a Vulcan here. TNG has a big derth in Vulcans for some reason. You'd think, since they're like the most popular alien, there's be more.
I ended up liking the Wesley portion more than I thought I would by the end (though only getting ONE of the four candidates in seems silly. They're all qualified??? It feels very 20th century thinking), but most of the episode is still just this asshole with a preconceived notion that he should get the captain fired investigating everyone, and every officer is sick of him. And it tries to set up a thing for later with a conspiracy within Starfleet. The Wesley stuff (especially Picard being a dad to Wesley) really did warm this episode up for me by the end though.
This episode DID give us this gif as well. A classic.
Heart of Glory - TNG 9.5/10
raises head up AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
THE FIRST KLINGON EPISODE! Gosh I love Klingons. They're my favorite (other than the Horta of course), and I was JUST complaining that Worf didn't have enough to do, and they didn't know what to do with him. The meme is his job is to be thrown around by the Monster of the Day to show how strong it it, but that's not even here in this first season!!! But at least he can do some KLINGON LOREBUILDING!
The episode starts without that though. Instead it's Geordi lorebuilding! Picard gets really weirdly into being able to see how Geordi sees, in the middle of a rescue mission and Data and Riker are like "uhhh sir?"
I do like how Geordi's view of Data looks like a character portrait from Disco Elysium though
Anyways they get to the Klingons who say that the broken freighter they're on, they were in a fight with some Ferengi (they're still trying to make the Ferengi a threat). In order to beat them, they surrendered, and then beamed over bombs when the Ferengi lowered shields and moved forward. So uh, they did a warcrime! Yay! That's... honorable!
This is good foreshadowing that these Klingon are kinda shitty. It's a neat struggle with Worf, battling his upbringing, what he knows is right, and his heritage, who are trying to lead him astray because "peace sucks". It does kinda sour for me when Picard doesn't trust Worf. Like c'mon. It's Worf! He won't betray you! And he doesn't. That's one single negative thing there, though, and it's very brief and out of nowhere. The rest of it is so good, ESPECIALLY the stuff with Worf. He's so good, and there's little trickles of what he'll become. This is more than a trickle. This is like the start of the river.
Anyways, the Klingon stuff here slaps. It shows how fractured the Klingon empire is, it builds Worf up in a great way. And it shows us THE KLINGON DEATH RITUAL. God I love it. I did it with them. Be warned, dead. A warrior comes.
The Arsenal of Freedom - TNG 8/10
This episode kinda surprised me at every turn. Lots of good twists. I expected it to be a Riker episode, it has some good Riker lore, but a lot of characters get a good change to shine. Even Yar! Yar gets to be actiony and make good shots in fighting off a powerful enemy, Picard and Crusher have a great moment trying to keep her alive and awake after a major wound and being seperated. And Geordi! Ahhh, Geordi. He's a badass running a good ship and putting up with some asshole. Yet ANOTHER chief engineer, the third one we've seen. God I can't wait for them to give Geordi a real job.
This engineer is a shithead. At the first sign danger, he's like "LEAVE AND ABANDON THE CAPTAIN AND THE AWAY TEAM, ALSO GIVE ME COMMAND." Then Geordi's like "no fuck off" and eventually he calls him back up and orders the Enterprise to run away. He's then like "You're ABANDONING them?!" and I just.... come on. I'm fine with an asshole character but he's literally contradicting himself and it's makin' me GRUMPY.
This episode is tense and fun, pretty good, but nothing BREATHTAKING, y'know? Nice action scenes though.
Symbiosis - TNG 2.5/10
This episode is fucked UP. Like oh my god. Okay to explain: There are two societies. One society only makes a drug, and nothing else. They are uber capitalists, they make that drug, and then sell it to the other society, which is filled with people dying of a plague the drug can cure.
That's already fucked up. The Brekkians (I'll call them Pfizer from now on) are like "Yes sure you're dying. But hey, we need money!" that's fucked up. BUT IT GETS WORSE.
TURNS OUT THERE'S NO ACTUAL VIRUS. THERE'S NO PLAGUE. The drug is a narcotic and it's actually just WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS. And the Brekkians are intentionally keeping this ENTIRE civilization drugged. Just to make money. And Picard is like "Well we can't come between that, sure we think it's evil but we can't push our morality on them" LIKE. LIKE.
And then there's a weird drug PSA, where Wesley is like "I don't understand, Yar, why would anyone start doing drugs?" and then they do a Just Say No PSA and it feels like Reagan was breathing down these fuckers necks, making it a "very special episode" where you gotta teach the kids about the War on Drugs. God I hated this. And not just because I have actual PTSD involving drug use. Which I do. But also cause it's just poorly done. They wanted to do it well but they failed real hard.
And Picard is like "Hey no that's the Prime Directive, we can't stop these parasites from leeching off of an entire civilization and making them drug addicts. We could easily fix this, Crusher has ways to ease the withdrawal symptoms. Instead we'll abuse the prime directive and make it so they won't be able to leech off them down the line, cause they won't help fix their ships, and the shipments will eventually stop."
That is... NOT HOW THE PRIME DIRECTIVE WORKS. AND THAT'S NOT HOW IT..... AGGHHH.
"Beverly, the Prime Directive is not just a set of rules!"
You're right. It's a set of rules that writers can abuse and twist around and claim works one way or another each episode so they can create drama. This episode would have been over instantly if it did work how it's supposed to.
At least we got this Riker good face!
Next week we've got the final episodes of season 1!! :D ALMOST DONE! And we've got two of the biggest episodes next week, too.... I'm excited! (and VERY nervous)
